Multiple electronic devices are increasingly connected together to communication date. In one example, entertainment and multi-media devices may be interconnected to transfer or share digital information. The connection of such devices generally requires some form of standard bus or interface to allow the devices to easily connect communicate with each other.
In one example, the HDMI™ (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) provides an interface that allows for the transfer of uncompressed digital high-definition video and audio, together with associated control signals. (HDMI is a trademark of HDMI Licensing, LLC) HDMI includes the High-Definition Multimedia Specification 1.3 (Hitachi, Ltd., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., Philips Consumer Electronics, International B.V., Silicon Image, Inc., Sony Corporation, Thomson Inc., and Toshiba Corporation) (Jun. 22, 2006), as well as earlier versions of HDMI. Multimedia devices may include any devices capable of providing, storing, or displaying multimedia data, including television monitors, cable and satellite set-top boxes, video players, including DVD (Digital Versatile Disk), HD (High-Definition) DVD, and Blu-Ray players, audio players, digital video recorders, and other similar devices.
However, the use of any interface may be affected by physical size of devices. For example, media devices may be portable or handheld. The use of an interface designed for a standard device may be difficult for smaller devices. In addition, there is physical limit on how many connections may be reasonably added to a smaller device. The addition of an interface in addition to, for example, a USB (Universal Serial Bus) connection to a device may result in excessive connections to the device, thus making it less likely that manufacturers will includes such an interface in manufactured device.